Christina Lackmann, a 32-year-old Australian woman, died back in April 2021 in Melbourne. A recent inquest has revealed that Lackmann felt dizzy, called emergency services, and waited for seven hours, eventually dying in her bathroom from a caffeine overdose.
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According to 9News and a coroner’s file, Lackmann died on April 22, 2021. While at her Hawthorn Road apartment in the city of Victoria, Melbourne, the woman began feeling dizzy and numb. She called Triple Zero (000), the Australian emergency number, at 7:49 p.m., requesting an ambulance.
While talking to the call-taker (CT), Lackmann listed her symptoms. With the provided information, her call was categorized as a Code 3, which is “non-acute/non-urgent.” The CT then attempted to transfer the call to a “Referral Service Triage Practitioner” (RSTP), to no avail. Lackmann was instructed by the CT to expect someone to call her back, and the call ended.
An RSTP attempted to call Lackmann multiple times, but she didn’t pick up the phone. Ambulance Victoria, a health agency, also attempted to call her, to no avail. At 9:13 p.m., Lackmann’s call was upgraded to a Code 2. However, two ambulances assigned to Lackmann were diverted to other cases deemed as “higher priority.”
Eventually, a paramedic ambulance arrived at Lackmann’s address at 2:23 a.m. Due to hindered access and Lackmann’s agitated and barking dog, the paramedics entered Lackmann’s apartment at 3 a.m. Once inside, Christina Lackmann was cold to the touch, lying on her bathroom floor. She was pronounced dead.
Caffeine Tablets
Lackmann’s cause of death was ruled a caffeine overdose. Her phone showed that caffeine tablets were delivered to her apartment the day of her on April, the day she called 000. No caffeine tablets or their packaging were found in Lackmann’s apartment.
Lackmann didn’t tell the CT she had ingested caffeine tablets. However, toxicologist Professor Dimitri Gerostamoulos determined that the caffeine detected in Lackmann’s blood was not achievable via normal coffee consumption. The amount of caffeine in her blood equates to, as per Gerostamoulos, 10 x 100 mg caffeine tablets.
Moreover, it was found that Christina Lackmann had suffered a caffeine tablet overdose back in 2015. She received treatment in time in that instance.
Coroner Catherine Fitzgerald ruled that if Lackmann had received earlier treatment, she could have been saved.
This, however, depends on what time Lackmann ingested the caffeine tablets. Medical practitioner Professor Narendra Gunja stated that it was possible that Lackmann could have been saved if she had taken the tablets an hour before her 000 call. If she took the tablets several hours before the call, on the other hand, and subsequently collapsed minutes after the call, then it is most likely that she would not have survived.
“In the absence of information about the time Christina ingested the caffeine, or the length of time between ingestion and the making of the 000 call, A/Prof Gunja was not able to pinpoint a specific time at which Christina’s death was still preventable,” coroner Fitzgeral wrote.